ABOUT US

Steve Friess is a 2011-12 recipient of the prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he will be studying the impact of the rapid expansion of Vegas-style gaming on Asia. He's a podcaster, author and Vegas-based freelance journalist who writes regularly for USA Today, The New York Times, Newsweek and many others. His column, "The Strip Sense" appears every Thursday in the Las Vegas Weekly. His books include "Gay Vegas" from Huntington Press and Knopf Mapguides' "Las Vegas."Friess co-hosts the weekly celebrity interview podcast The Strip Podcast "The Strip" with his husband, Miles Smith, the executive producer at KSNV-TV, Channel 3. For four years, Steve also co-hosted The Petcast with Las Vegas Sun education scribe Emily Richmond.

Twitter Updates

The easiest way to make more money at poker is to play against easier competition. BestPokerSites.org has rated all of the easiest poker sites so you can find the fishiest players (and take all of their money). Check out the article today.

Tags

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Here's this week's LVW column, sure to be significantly less controversial than last week's. Sorry! Enjoy. -sf

Cosmopolitan: a fitting bookendBy STEVE FRIESS

So this is how it ends, huh?

Here we go, heading once again into yet another December casino-resort opening on the Strip. This time it’s the $3.9 billion Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, scheduled to start taking bets a year after the $8.5 billion CityCenter complex did so, two years on from the revelation of Encore Las Vegas and three years since Palazzo Las Vegas debuted.

It may seem like old hat, a tradition of sorts. Indeed, I’ve enjoyed these annual opportunities to gather up with my friends from Vegas-obsessed cyberspace and take our newest toys for a few spins, to pore over every detail and choice, to comment on food, décor, service, marketing plan and overall sensibility. I’ve loved taking the temperature of Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn, Jim Murren and now John Unwin when these men are at both their most anxious and most boastful, documenting for posterity their lofty expectations and then comparing that to the reality that comes to pass thereafter.

And yet, of course, this one is different. This is the last of it, ...

0
comments:

THE STRIP FINALE

Below are links to the final episodes and last week of special editions of The Strip Podcast. Right-click on any of these to save and hear at your leisure. Otherwise, click on them and they should play. Enjoy, and thanks for the wonderful years.